There was a strange tension in the air surrounding that table.

Even as the light mocking continued, I couldn't help but feel the weight of the atmosphere bearing down on me. Like something had happened or was going to happen, written in lines across the walls that I couldn't read or even see clearly.

Eventually, after more teasing than I would have appreciated, the table calmed down. Pushing myself to my feet, it seemed I'd taken all the levity with me. In their seats across from me, Gentle and La Brava watched me closely. Twice seemed completely unaffected, accepting a bottle of water from a clone of himself and then dispelling said clone with a swift strike over the head.

"Target, Momo Yaoyorozu. Her Quirk is the ability to convert her fatty cells into any inorganic material."

With a bit of thought, and a flash of annoyance at myself for forgetting to bring along a picture, I planted both hands against the table and pushed Overhaul into it. The piece of furniture was thick, the reddish brown tint of it suggesting mahogany, and made from an excellent substitute as I willed it into a quick facsimile of Momo's face.

Pretty features, a spiky ponytail, and my best approximation of a determined stare through wooden eyes. Beside me, Twice whistled appreciatively. His clone, in the final stages of decomposing, took the time to slap him across the back of the head before it could melt completely.

If I was a hair slower in flattening the table out again, he probably would have lost an eye to the wooden spikes I'd raised. Twice's head slammed into the table and bounced back, the reversed momentum sending him toppling backwards out of his chair.

Gentle took a sip from a teacup that I could have sworn hadn't been in his hands a second ago, a rare frown pulling his moustache low to his lips. La Brava looked from him to myself, with a glint in her eyes that I couldn't identify. Clearing his throat, Gentle set his cup down, his next words almost causing me to drop Twice from where I'd been pulling him back to his feet with a few locks of hair.

"I take it the assassination attempts failed, then?"

I jerked my head up, almost sending Twice flying over the table. He managed to disengage himself right in time, flipping through the air and landing perfectly in his seat once again, bottle of water still clutched in his hand. It was a tragedy that I didn't think to congratulate him.

Gentle didn't either, his face set in an uncharacteristically deep frown.

"What?" It was the best reply I could come up with, locked grappling with confusion.

Beside me, Twice groaned, spinning his water bottle idly on a finger. "Not this shit again."

La Brava shot him a glower that he completely ignored. The look melted from her face, along with some of the colour in her cheeks, when I caught her eye instead.

"Explain." It wasn't a request. A pocket of air hardened next to Gentle's head, which he placed with teacup on. It didn't escape my notice when the elastic air shifted slightly in my direction, nor that there was the slightest bit of pink smoke in the air.

For a moment, the kitchen was mostly silent. The only noise came from the bubbling of the teapot on the stove, and the slight creaking of the table underneath my hands. That silence was shattered into a million pieces when Twice took a noisy sip of his water, pulled the bottle away from his mouth to belch loudly, and swung his feet up onto the table with a resounding thud.

"How are you all this bad at talking? Rich bozos have been targets since the beginning of time." The bottle, now half empty, spun on his finger at an odd angle. "I told you two he wouldn't have anything to do with it."

"What?" I repeated, still reeling. I'd gone from the centre of attention to a barely interesting piece of the scenery in a few words.

"It's a bit too convenient to be a coincidence, isn't it?" La Brava huffed, crossing her arms and glaring off to the side. The bottle twirling on Twice's finger flipped abruptly, lancing down in my direction and stopping when it was pointed right between my eyes.

"The first time he came home in months, he got groped at the front door. Does that sound like something that'd happen to someone without weird luck?"

Almost like there had been some kind of silent cue, all three swivelled around to stare at me. Despite being the tallest person in the room, I felt strangely small.

"I…" had no fucking clue what was going on, as I scrambled for something to say, "...thought she'd concussed herself on my bike?"

In unison, they all blinked at me. It was actually somewhat creepy to behold.

With a sigh, Gentle reclaimed his teacup, pushing the elastic pocket of air out of existence with a dismissive wave. "My apologies, you are correct. He's clueless."

"Oi."

"And you thought he was trying to form a gang." Twice scoffed, swigging at his bottle in a movement that I wouldn't have associated with water.

Wait.

"Trying to form a what?" Being the only person on their feet was starting to make me feel silly. Falling back into my chair, I sent some hair out to retrieve the teapot and a cup for myself, stopping along the way to refill Gentle's when he held it out.

"A gang." Twice, being the kind and giving soul he was, stole my teacup once I'd finished pouring it, taking a massive swig from it in front of my very eyes. Having already anticipated that, I brought out the second cup I'd taken from under the table, filling it up and whipping at Twice's hand with some sticky hair when he reached for it. "Ow, fuck. Haven't you heard the legend about the first supervillain?"

My knowledge of Japanese history was lacking at best. The teapot was pushed to the other side of the table for Gentle to empty as I considered the question. There was only one 'first supervillain' I could think of, but I had my doubts he was public knowledge.

"Maybe? Is that the guy who stole a bunch of quirks and was a real dick about it?"

La Brava coughed into a tiny fist, doing her best to smother a snort. Twice laughed outright, his teacup spilling down his shirt and eliciting a pained yelp. Only Gentle regarded me without levity, not even pausing to shoot Twice a glare for wasting perfectly good tea.

"You've truly never heard the legends?"

I shrugged, pushing away from the table. The empty teapot came with me as I wandered into the kitchen, dumped into the sink to be cleaned later. I could Overhaul it and have it in perfect working order in half a second, but the last time I'd tried that, it had led to a half hour lecture on the sanctity of ensuring all tea that came out of it was as clean and pure as possible.

Instead, I just grabbed a second teapot from the cupboard containing all we'd collected, sixteen in total and counting. Living with an addict was never easy.

"I suppose that isn't too surprising. Nowadays it is little more than a whisper." The cup was wrestled from Gentle's hands with minor difficulty. Sometimes it took his brain a moment to catch up to his instincts. At least he was easier to deal with than Twice, the clone user forcing me to catch dishes that he threw at me like dodgeballs. "Only those who are smart enough to not carelessly spread rumours even hear about him in the first place."

With a hum, I carefully opened the cupboard we kept our tea in. There was so much packed in there that any sudden movements would lead to an avalanche of epic and bitter proportions. Selecting one at random, I closed the door before gravity could get any funny ideas, settling the filled pot on the stove and reading what I'd grabbed.

Imported from Tibet, huh? This would be interesting.

"Let's hear this legend, then." I called out, touching some strands of hair to the teapot. Within a second, the metal was bright red with trapped heat, the particles vibrated beyond anything a normal flame would have been able to reach. With that done, I left it to boil, leaning back against the counter and looking back out over the table.

I could see it still, clear as day. The suspicion aimed at me, and the exasperation aimed at them. Throughout it all, my gaze held, and I knew I'd won when Gentle took a deep breath and leaned forward.

"Centuries ago, during the first generation of Quirk emergence, there was a man. His birth was of no significance. He lived normally, with his parents and later, his younger brother. However, on the day of his fourth birthday, Japan was changed forever."

They were an eclectic group, infinitely interesting to behold. Manami with her diminutive defiance, Danjuro's practised grace. Off to the side, Jin swung precariously on two legs of his chair, grinning unrepentantly with his boots planted firmly atop the table.

And then there was me. Maybe fitting in, probably not. Clueless when I needed to be the most aware.

"That man, just a boy then, developed his Quirk. It was a fantastic power, able to give and take others' Quirks as he pleased. In a time before heroes and villains, before the concept of vigilantism was conceived, he was a hero to those who knew him."

Gentle's mouth curled into a sour smile, though it lightened slightly when La Brava's hand came to rest on his arm.

"Quirks were once reviled. Looked down upon as unnatural, wrong. There were those born powerless who yearned for power, and those born powerful who yearned to be normal. He would give and take, as nobody else could. He took both Quirks and the revulsion people felt towards them unto himself, and earned himself a loyal following in the process."

"Don't worry V, we still love you!" Twice called out, his voice far louder than necessary. My resulting middle finger, as well as La Brava's ineffective attempts at kicking Twice's chair out from underneath him, drew a chuckle from Gentle.

"But there was more to his generosity. His heart, born pure into this world, twisted along with the views of Quirks in his time. Where once there had been a boy who just wanted to help, now stood a man who would settle for nothing less than complete control. Those who would once pay for their Quirks in gratitude were instead conscripted into his ranks. Those who would not give up their Quirks or join him were eliminated. Not even his parents or his little brother were spared from the wrath consuming his soul."

The kettle let out a shrill whistle. I lifted it from the flame without looking away.

"His tyranny wouldn't end until the rise of vigilantes, in the second generation of Quirks. Seemingly overnight, that man disappeared. Life settled as well as it could in the changing times, and after two more generations he was forgotten, along with the darker times he'd brought about."

I watched as Gentle conjured up another disc of elastic air beside his head. It wobbled to and fro, drifted in a lazy arc, and compressed itself down to the size of a coin, before it was dismissed with the sound of an empty vacuum being filled.

"However, he is still out there. Kept from ageing by one of the many Quirks he stole. Always plotting, always prepared to step out from the shadows and plunge Japan back into the eternal darkness he now craves. A man-made-nightmare through the whims of a blind society, and the evil that corrupted his heart."

The story complete, Gentle sagged back into his seat, as though just recalling the story had physically exhausted him. I turned away then, busying myself with preparing the tea as we all liked it. Bitter for Gentle and myself, sweet for La Brava, and dangerously sugary for Twice.

The silence had returned while I worked, the clicking of my shoes against the tiled ground echoing like gunshots throughout the room. With a cup in each hand and two more tangled up in my hair, I made my way back to my seat, handing the cups out as I went.

Finally, I retook my seat, across from Gentle.

"And you think I'm trying to follow in his footsteps." I didn't flinch away from his gaze, nor did he from mine. Both of us took a sip from our cups, moving in unison, giving off near identical sighs as the hot liquid slid down our throats.

"You have to agree that the similarities are quite striking, no?"

"Bullshit." Beside me, Twice scoffed yet again. Even if my first impulse was to agree with his dismissal, I couldn't help but wonder what my future had in store.

"I…I don't think I-"

Whatever I was going to say was interrupted as my pocket began to vibrate. Eyebrows furrowed, I pulled my phone out, recognising the number flashing across the screen immediately. It would be difficult to forget after going through all the trouble of decoding it in the first place.

Whatever I'd been about to say died on my tongue. We could have this conversation later, right now I had higher priorities.

"If you can figure out why the Yaoyorozu family is being targeted, let me know. This'll be much easier if they owe me their lives." My part said, I stood up, stalking towards the backdoor with my phone in a death grip. "Excuse me."

The door swung shut behind me. I checked quickly to ensure the windows were also closed, before taking long strides towards the trees surrounding my property. With a beep, I answered the call.

"Talk. Now."


"Holy crap that was so scary!"

Twice hummed, barely paying attention. This tea from Tibet or whatever tasted awful.

"It still feels like someone is walking on my grave!"

"He's not that scary," Twice muttered into his cup. Unfortunately for him, his tiny roommate heard him loud and clear.

"You're not the one he was glaring at!" La Brava groaned, pulling at her twintails with both hands. "What am I going to do if I can't find anything he wants? He's going to be so mad!"

Gentle, usually so patient and skilled at calming his partner down, was conspicuously silent. Those knowing eyes on him were making Twice's skin crawl, much like it had constantly before Mineta had tested his Quirk on him.

"He's not unreasonable. If you don't find anything, just tell him."

"You trust him a fair amount." Gentle's voice was quiet, but his words were pointed.

"I just don't act like he'll kill me the second I'm not useful." La Brava's sharp intake of breath said it all. Even though he knew his glare had nothing on the utter venom Mineta could convey, the sour look Twice directed at her still had her shrinking back. "I get memories from my clones, you know. I've heard the kinds of things you're saying about him."

The raw fear on her face had Twice's stomach turning worse than the abysmal tea did. Really, she'd not crossed any sort of line. There were things that Twice had said to people employing him that were a hundred times worse, but none of the people who'd ever employed him had been able to disintegrate him with a single touch.

Maybe his sense of self-preservation was skewed. Well, not maybe, he knew for a fact it was.

"I'm not gonna tell him any of it, but you should." With Mineta gone, there was no reason to hang around. Twice swung his legs off the table, spinning up onto his feet with his half-filled cup balanced atop his head. None of the tea escaped, at least until he reached one of the potted plants in the kitchen and poured what remained in the cup into its pot. "I'm not going to talk to him for you, though. You can't keep hiding Eri from him forever, either."

His piece said and his cup in the sink, Twice meandered out of the room, hands in his pockets and a jaunty tune on his lips.

Hopefully nobody would remember that it was his turn to do dishes.